Two leading brands of beauty institutes, Guinot and Mary Cohr (who respectively have 1,800 and 1,300 institutes in France) have decided to take legal action against manufacturers of laser or pulsed light hair removal devices for illegal exercise of Medicine. The two institutes indeed reproach manufacturers for providing equipment to beauticians, while the law indicates that “any method of hair removal, except depilations with tweezers or wax”, can only be performed by a doctor.
The Mary Cohr and Guinot institutes, which only use wax for their clients’ hair removal, believe that there is no fair competition.
Devices that are not only used for hair removal
Each year, beauticians are prosecuted and convicted of illegally practicing medicine after using pulsed light devices for hair removal. But this time it is the device manufacturers themselves who are being sued. “In France, nothing prohibits the manufacture and distribution of this type of material which is also used in the treatment of wrinkles”, argues their lawyer.
For their part, dermatologists support the ban on the use of these machines by non-medical personnel. They explain that these devices are not only used by beauticians for hair removal, but also to treat dark spots on the skin. “But a melanoma is difficult to diagnose and when a beautician removes a task with a laser, there is a loss of chance for the patients. It is therefore a question of public health” explained Luc Sulimovic, president of the national union of dermatologists. -venereologists, in an interview with Le Figaro.
The trial will take place today at the Paris Commercial Court.
